HJBR May/Jun 2022

HEALTHCARE JOURNAL OF BATON ROUGE I  MAY / JUN 2022 15 deals. That is what makes the difference in survivability from cardiac arrest. It’s not us, it’s do you have someone who immedi- ately, upon the patient’s cardiac arrest, can, as rapidly as possible — measured within seconds, not minutes, seconds — start CPR. Bystander CPR has the biggest impact of survival from cardiac arrest than anything else anybody does. That’s what saves peo- ple. I am absolutely, absolutely devoted to doing whatever we can do to get bystander CPR out to everybody on the planet because that’s going to save lives. Editor Are you experiencing the same staffing issues as the rest of the healthcare industry, and if so, how are you address- ing them? Godbee Yes, absolutely, we’re having the same staffing issues as everybody else, but it is not necessarily because of the pandemic. We were at almost a 20% personnel deficit of the baseline before the pandemic. Now, with the pandemic, yes clearly, we have had people lose work time due to COVID illness. But for us, amazingly enough, as the only entity in the parish government who actu- ally sees patients, we’ve only had about, I’m ballpark estimating, 35, maybe 40, people who have actually lost work time in two years due to being ill from COVID. We’ve got about 150 paramedics. Editor I would like to switch gears for a moment while I have you. The Journal is doing a series on drug addiction, and I understand that a few years ago, you surprised a room of local leaders with your answer on the opioid crisis. Will you please share your comment? Godbee You have to be careful when you quote me — there is a little bit of jaded cyni- cism. We were in a meeting with several local leaders several years ago discussing the opioid crises. The question was asked, “What caused, precipitated, or facilitated the opioid crisis?”Now there were a lot of peo- ple in the room, and I figured I was the least significant person in this meeting, so I was sitting in the back of the room not saying anything — kinda watching everybody else who was way further up the food chain than I — and no one was answering the question. I was thinking, “These people are far more locked into what is going on than I am. I’m just an emergency doctor who does EMS. We are not the opioid knowledge guys.” But they asked the question, and nobody answered. So, I raised my hand, they rec- ognized me, and I said simply, “Press Ganey scores and patient satisfaction surveys.” Editor So, what happened to the room? Godbee They were all sitting there, and what was funny was everyone in the room that was a provider had this sort of “yes, abso- lutely, good answer”kind of reaction. “Yeah, I know, you can’t afford to have a patient fill out a complaint.”Now, you have to real- ize this is the emergency room doctor talk- ing right now, this not the EMS director. You can’t afford to have people complain about you; it doesn’t really matter if it was not that legitimate. You can’t afford to have complaints, and you need to have good Press Ganey scores. They say, “Wow what a great doctor you are, your Press Ganey scores are way up there.” Well, if you ever look at the questions that are asked on a Press Ganey questionnaire, virtually none of them have anything to do with how good of medical care you provide. It is, “Were you comfortable; did they address this; did you feel valued; did they listen to you?”They are all important things, but what you need on there is if someone really wanted medica- tion X and you didn’t give them X, then at that point ... boom. It is like a lot of things in life — one zero can drop your score. On a zero to 10 scale, that one can drop your average score down a point or a point and a half. One evalua- tion. That is what everybody is worried about. It is not the primary driver, but that was hugely significant to the question, “Why is everybody getting addicted to opioids?” Because guys like me were not wanting to get bad scores and bad evaluations, and sure enough, if you want opioids, there was a pretty low threshold to say OK, OK, OK. I am overstating that, but I think you under- stand what I’m saying. Editor I do. Now, has that changed? Godbee No, it hasn’t really changed that much. It really hasn’t. I understand the sher- iff of Livingston Parish gives a great presen- tation, which refutes what I just said but it also confirms the ridiculousness of what I just said. He shows a Lortab pill jar from when he had his wisdom teeth taken out, perhaps nine years ago. The prescription was for 100 pills. He used three. There are 97 left in the bottle. This contributes to the opioid crisis. And I thought, “Yep, he’s got it.” You have your wisdom teeth taken out; perhaps you need 10, not 100. It is multifactorial as you can see. I could go on forever about this. I think what we are going to find is it is very complex. It is going to require a multifaceted, multidisciplinary approach to it and probably isn’t going to have an 80% success rate. I think you have the point — we are trying to find out what the heck is an extremely broad answer. We are going to find out that we need one of these, and one of those, someone who understands this, and a person who can do that ... that is what we are going to find out. Editor It has been an honor. Thank you for your service as a real-life action hero. Godbee My pleasure, I had a great time. n